From the Episode 4 Performance Report Card (Figure 2):

• Armando becomes the second male contestant of the series to win an episode! Who would have thought that Kumail would be the last to win an episode.
  • Armando has also rightfully earned the title of achieving the most points per episode in the series so far. He accumulated 24 points in Episode 4, which out of a potential 25 points, is a very impressive hit rate of 96%.
• The rare occurrence of a three way tie occurred in 2nd place between Joanna, Joel and Kumail. They were awarded 16 points each by the Taskmaster.
  • This was considered a bad episode for Joanna (lower half of episode points distribution), a very good episode for Joel (top quartile), and a good episode for Kumail (top half of distribution).
• Amy had her worst episode to date, only accumulating 11 points and finishing 5th in the episode.
  • Amy’s performance in the last two episode has been less than stellar which, as a Gledhill stan, is disappointing to see. I hope she can turn it round, much like Maisie Adam’s escape from the Series 20 Dip. It will be the Gledhill that I will die on.

From the Points Distributions table (Figure 3):

• Greg has not handed out any negative points in this series.
• Amy did not score anything higher than 3 points in this episode, which likely contributed to worst episode to date.
  • Amy’s last two prize tasks have been disappointing in my opinion. She has definitely shown a lot more potential and creativity in the past.
  • Her points distribution for this episode is quite the departure from her typical high points skewing distribution.
• Armando scored the full 5 points in 4 out of the 5 broadcasted tasks (80%), and 4 points for the remaining task. It is thus no surprise that Armando won the episode.
  • We can clearly see that the point distribution in this episode, is substantially different to historic point distributions which is peaked and centered in the lower points range.

And following the outcome of Episode 5, the series scoreboard (Figure 5) has changed yet again:

• Joanna sneaks back into 1st place for the series, accumulating a total of 86 points to date.
• Amy’s disastrous Episode 5 meant that she has slipped back into 2nd position for the series with 85 points.
  • However, the 1 point lead that Joanna has could easily be lost in the next episode if Amy regains her focus and starts performing well again. You can do it Amy!
• Kumail maintains his 3rd place series position with 75 points. Hollywood stability and unionisation!
• Armando jumps into 4th place for the series after his stellar performance in Episode 5.
• Joel falls back into the familiar position of 5th place for the series.
• However, there is only 3 separating the men, and thus we can fully expect these series positions to change by the next episode.
• There is a 10 point gap between the women and men of this series at the moment, a potential indication of who is the stronger sex in the world. Girl power etc.
  • The men will have to have at least 2 good episodes (and the women would have to have 2 bad episodes), in order to have a chance of being contenders for series champions.

The cast of Series 21 still conform to the general cloud mass of prior Taskmaster contestants, as seen in Figure 7.

• Following Episode 5, we now see that Armando is considered the most volatile contestant of the cast in terms of episode scores. It is amazing what a single stellar episode performance can do to your scores.
  • Amy is the second most volatile, but it is worth noting that the episode score standard deviation (volatility), is similar for Amy, Joanna, Kumail and Joanna.
• It’s also worth remarking how close Amy and Joanna are in terms of both average episode score and standard deviation at this point. This is not a complete surprise (at least from an average episode score perspective), since there is only 1 point separating them in the series at the moment.
• In terms of potential rebels from Taskmaster contestants of yore, we see rebels from Series 2 (Richard Osman, Katherine Ryan, Jon Richardson) on the far right¹.
  • The Series 2 appearances can be attributed to the controversial live task “Throw rabbits into a hat” in which the actual physical number of rabbits in hat directly translated into episode and series points. This consequently inflated the episode scores for most of these contestants.
• We also see Series 6’s Liza Tarbuck as a potential rebel. This can be attributed to Episode 5 of Series 6 presenting 6 tasks in total, rather than the typical 5, and thus more points be available.
• Many of the other rebels also come from the earlier, and shorter series of Taskmaster (Series 1 to 5).
  • There deviousness is likely due to the shorter series making them more susceptible to extreme values, particularly when we are dealing with non-robust statistics such as the average and standard deviation (that is they are highly influenced by outliers and extreme values).

From Figure 8, the neighbourhoods surrounding each contestant of Series 21 is generally in line with their current series standings.

• The majority of Amy’s neighbours eventually placed either 1st or 2nd in the series.
• Surprisingly for Armando, the majority of his neighbours have placed 2nd in the series.
  • Series 20’s Maisie Adam is also considered a neighbour of Armando which may provide Armando some hope he can escape the Dip.
• Joanna’s neighbourhood consists on 2nd placers in the majority.
• Joel’s neighbourhood consists of 5th placers in the majority.
• Kumail’s has 4th placers as the majority in his neighbourhood.